Some good news: More than 120,000 people have recovered from COVID-19
New figures released by Johns Hopkins University on Friday morning have revealed more than 120,000 people have seemingly recovered from the deadly COVID-19 disease.
COVID-19 had its first detection in the Chinese province of Wuhan and has spread all throughout the globe to more than 520,000 people across 175 countries.
At least 23,900 lives have been claimed so far and it is the United States who has now overtaken China as the country with the highest confirmed cases of the disease.
Thankfully, nations have begun reporting an upward trend in health as thousands of patients who were overcome with COVID-19 are now recovered.
Italy is reported to have 9,300 recovered patients and 7,500 deaths.
Despite the death toll continuing to climb, the World Health Organisation is optimistic after receiving “encouraging signs in the country as they are beginning to report lower infection rates every day.
“While the situation remains very serious, we are starting to see some encouraging signs,” WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, explained during a press conference on Thursday.
He went on to say: “Italy, which has the highest number of cases in the region, has just seen a slightly lower rate of increase, though it is still too early to say that the pandemic is peaking in that country.”
China lifted their outbound travel restrictions in Hubei while Wuhan is expected to lift their own ban in April. The city has been under strict lockdown restrictions since late January.
Iran currently has the highest number of recovered patients outside of China, with almost 10,457 people who have recovered.
The virus took 2,230 lives in the country and has plagued over 24,900 people as of Thursday afternoon.
Between 4,000 and 7,000 people have reportedly recovered from the infection throughout Spain, France, Germany and South Korea.
These countries are also among the top 10 countries with the highest amount of confirmed cases outside China.
In a press conference outside Parliament House in Canberra today, Prime Minister Scott Morrison addressed the media alongside Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy after a National Cabinet meeting.
Despite worries about travellers transmitting the virus after returning from overseas, Professor Murphy says the government is “confident” with their testing procedures.
“We think that we are pretty confident with our testing regime, which is one of the highest rates of testing per population in the world, with one of the lowest positivity rates.”
While Australia continues to deal with the deadly coronavirus outbreak, the PM has announced businesses must go into “hibernation” in a bid to ensure they come back out better on the other side of coronavirus.
“We want these businesses to effectively go into a hibernation, which means on the other side, the employees come back, the opportunities come back, the economy comes back,” he said.
“This will underpin our strategy as we go to the third tranche of our economic plan, and that will include support by states and territories on managing the very difficult issue of commercial tenancies and also dealing ultimately with residential tenancies as well.”